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George Osborne’s cuts programme is ‘short-termist’ and ‘lacks joined-up thinking across government’, MPs are warning.

Faced with the need to find £200billion in cuts over four years from 2010, the treasury took the axe to those budgets that were easiest to cut, the Commons public accounts committee said.

That was despite the fact ‘they might undermine the government’s stated priority of encouraging growth’, they added. In a report published today, the cross-party committee described some spending cuts as ‘ill thought-through’.

MPs said there was ‘no evidence of clear thinking’ about how savings in one Whitehall ministry could impose knock-on costs for other departments.

The report cited the decision to slash spending on capital projects from £60billion to £38billion in real terms, a move which was partly reversed.

‘Long-term planning is at the heart of the government’s capital plans which set out a long-term infrastructure pipeline worth £310billion, and includes major projects which will be delivered over the next few decades.’